Attorneys for the plaintiffs are petitioning a federal court for an emergency order to stop the government’s illegal and brutal suppression of First Amendment rights.
CHICAGO — During the summer of 2025, the Trump Administration has deployed federal forces to cities across the United States with announced missions to deter crime and enforce immigration laws. These federal forces, however, have used violent force against the press, elected officials, religious leaders, and private individuals engaged in peaceful and protected activities.
These federal forces are not trained to conduct local policing, and their tactics involve the indiscriminate use of force and arresting people without any legal basis.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing center in Broadview, IL, has been the site of peaceful, constitutionally protected activity for decades, Over the summer of 2025, as a result of reports of inhumane conditions for detainees inside the facility, protesters have gathered to demand the closure of the facility. These protests have been peaceful and non-threatening.
In recent weeks, however, the Trump Administration has sent federal officials and agents to brutally suppress free speech at the site through intentional and escalating violence, including the dangerous and indiscriminate use of near-lethal weapons such as tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper-balls, flash grenades, and other unwarranted and disproportionate tactics.
A new lawsuit filed this morning argues that this wanton violence by the federal government is a blatant attempt to interfere with the most cherished and fundamental rights enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religious belief, and the right to peaceably assemble and express disagreement with the government.
“Never in modern times has the federal government undermined bedrock constitutional protections on this scale, or usurped states’ police power by directing federal agents to carry out an illegal mission against the people for the government’s own benefit,” the complaint states.
Today’s lawsuit is being brought by members of the press, as well as by individuals representing clergy and ordinary citizens who have chosen to speak in opposition to the Trump Administration’s policies, and who now come together to courageously stand up for the First Amendment rights of all Americans. These include:
- Media organizations and outlets such as Block Club Chicago, Chicago Headline Club, the Chicago Newspaper Guild Local 34071, the National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians Local 54041, and individual journalists whose attempts to report the truth have been met with targeted attacks and widespread government violence.
Stephanie Lulay, Executive Editor and Co-Founder of Block Club Chicago, says her outlet has allocated a significant portion of its resources to covering DHS actions at the protests since September 19.
“During that time, at least four of our employees or freelancers have told me that they were hit with pepper balls and subjected to tear gas by federal agents at Broadview,” Ms. Lulay reports. “We intend to continue to report on the protests, but our ability to do so, to the standards that we hold ourselves to, continues to be impacted by our fears of violence and arrests of our employees and contractors.” - Members of the clergy, such as Pastor David Black of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago in the Woodlawn neighborhood, whose peaceful, free expression of his religion has led to his being shot repeatedly in the head with near-lethal projectiles and sprayed in the face with tear gas.
“I extended my arms, palms outstretched toward the ICE officers, in a traditional Christian posture of prayer and blessing,” Pastor Black recalls. “Without any warning, and without any order or request that I and others disperse, I was suddenly fired upon by ICE officers. In rapid fire, I was hit seven times on my arms, face and torso with exploding pellets that contained some kind of chemical agent. It was clear to me that the officers were aiming for my head, which they struck twice.” - Individual protesters, such as William Paulson, a 67-year-old retired union painter, who says he went to the protests because he “wanted to appeal to the humanity of the federal agents at the facility and express that what they were doing was wrong on a moral basis.”
On Sept. 27, Mr. Paulson was there when ICE agents launched an indiscriminate attack on the protesters without audible warning. “Gas canisters had been shot in front of and behind me,” he recalls. “I started to inhale the gas, and I couldn’t see or breathe. Around me, I could hear people being tackled to the ground. Then, flash bang grenades started to go off near me. I was disoriented…My eyes and nose were burning…I fell to all fours and threw up. My eyes and nose were in extreme pain. My skin was burning. I have emphysema and COPD, so the gas affected me very strongly.” Mr. Paulson says he tried to go back the next day but could only stay a few minutes before having to leave. “I felt afraid the entire time I was there,” he says.
The complaint names as defendants Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Kristi Noem; Acting Director of ICE Todd Lyons; Acting Executive Associate Director of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Marcos Charles; ICE’s Chicago Field Office Director Russell Hott; Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Gregory Bovino; Attorney General of the United States Pam Bondi; individual agents of ICE, CBP, DHS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the Department of Justice who have largely concealed their identities and culpability behind masks; and Donald Trump, President of the United States.
The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys from Loevy + Loevy, the Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic of the University of Chicago School of Law, First Defense Legal Aid, Protect Democracy, and the ACLU of Illinois.
The attorneys are also filing an Emergency Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order, asking the court for immediate, injunctive relief against the government’s violent suppression of free speech.
A similar motion was filed and granted in Los Angeles last month, after federal troops deployed the same sorts of tactics against journalists and protesters. There, the Court concluded that “federal agents’ indiscriminate use of force…will undoubtedly chill the media’s efforts to cover these public events and protesters seeking to express peacefully their views on national policies,” and that federal agents had endangered large numbers of peaceful protesters, legal observers, and journalists.
“The First Amendment demands better,” the order concluded.